Recruitathon

They got the title of the event wrong - see above please - 'cos I always understood that "Socialist Butlins" was the beanfeast that the SWP held at Skegness every year: twelve to a room, pinning the tailism on Bambery the donkey, cheap Lincolnshire potato wine and Lindsay German waking the comrades up every morning with the words "Morning Cadre, Hi De Hi" over the tannoy, but for all that the Nicky Wire and James Dean Bradfield of the ultra-left have provided an entertaining account of their time at this year's SWP Recruitathon.

Of the two meetings on Modernism that they attended, they make the interesting point that:

" . . . These meetings proved to be the equivalent of last year's Sartre meeting . . . In other words, because they are about relatively safe, peripheral issues, where there is no rigid party line, it is where real debate goes on and SWPers can really get stuck into each other. It's like a safety valve for internal dissent, and great fun to watch. Naturally, a debate over Iraq would be beyond the pale as all the questions have already been answered by the Central Committee. We look forward to next year's row about reclaiming Ezra Pound for the left."

It's a point I'd never considered before but it does make sense. How is that otherwise argumentative and cantankerous politicos suddenly turn into a cloned collective version of that bloke from the late Fast Show, with their exclaimations of "brilliant", "super" and "The workers united will be defeated" for those few hot days in July? This use of the safety valve of the cultural meeting is not something that only applies to the SWP. I still maintain that the most hotly debated meeting I ever participated in, in the SPGB, was the: 'Grateful Dead: shit or not?' debate that took place amongst party members after an Autumn Delegate Meeting one time. I thought it was going to come to blows at some point, until half the combatants in the room were quickly dispersed with the threat by one comrade on the opposing side that he would start singing the lyrics to 'Till The Morning Comes' a capella style.

Sadly, there is no mention of them tangling with the Sparts or an update on Dave's impersonation of Paul F. of Revolutionary History fame, and there also isn't any mention of the Party doing a stall at the event but I hope that isn't because they didn't do a stall this year. In the words of that black and white film whose title I don't remember because I never knew its name in the first place: "Say it isn't so, Joe. Say it isn't so."